


fantasies

by sombregods



Series: The New Normal [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Bitterness, Costume Kink, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Heist, Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Outer Space, Pining, Post-Episode: s02e34-35 Juno Steel and the Soul of the People, Slow Burn, Surprise Kissing, honeypot mission, space gang space gang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-01-11 20:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18431303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sombregods/pseuds/sombregods
Summary: Nureyev drinks nothing but black coffee for breakfast, favors silver jewelry, sleeps with one eye open, and is glad to let Buddy take the lead in their criminal overtures. His tongue is sharp, his silence sharper. He wears tailored A-line suits, slim silver glasses, garçon-style culottes, and once, notably, a smoking-jacket embroidered in white roses, which Juno hates to look at. And always, always, heels—practical suede boots, red-soled pumps, piercing stilettos. Legs for days.Or: sharing a spaceship with a master thief who's a) extremely hurt, b) very bitter, and c) really fucking sexy is ... a challenge.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I realized a couple of days ago that Juno and Rita have basically joined a crew of space pirates. _Space pirates_. What a gem. 
> 
> This installment is turning out slightly longer than I'd anticipated (read: double the size), so I'm splitting it into two chapters for convenience's sake; the following installment will probably be double that. So much for a quick fix ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The Night Market of the Twelve lies inside the hollow planet Null-10, in the farthest sector of the Outer Rim. It is, all at once, entirely like Juno imagined, and nothing like at all. And, sure, he's heard the stories—everyone knows the stories who’s ever heard of those dark criminal coves, where lives are bartered, bodies are rebuilt, hearts are assembled in copper and limelight, and even egg-diamonds are sold for their weight in old, real gold—but the real thing beats 'em all. Like one of the cathedrals from the old Terran stories: bright noise and stained glass and martyred sainthood. Gigantic. Enough to get lost in, forever. But Buddy leads the way without hesitation, the rifle swinging at her side, weaving her path easily between the shadowed booths and the bright-lit stands. The crowd—a heaving, roaring mass of voices and bodies and feeler limbs and joints—parts before her. Behind her: Juno, and Rita, hanging onto his arm.

They pass a shop of candied meat and brandy-poached fruit, and Rita falters for a second, craning her head to look back. Juno’s eye is caught by the vendor, who looks like nothing he’s ever seen before. Tall enough you’d think they don’t look right. Distorting space. This place is like a fever dream.

Buddy takes a sharp left. They plunge through an alleyway off to the side, in sweet darkness, and duck past a heavy curtain into—a bar.

It even _looks_ like a Martian bar, Juno realizes: woodsmoke and well-whiskey and a bartender who's had their nose broken in more than a few times. The people there, not so much. He thinks the bulky shape slumped over in a chair might have a long, black elephant trunk slipping out of its ratty hoodie. A couple of dodgy-looking fellas glare at them from the farthest corner. Other than that, the place’s pretty dead.

"Sit down, darling," Buddy says, her hand around his arm. Rita has already slipped into a seat at a low table, tucking her elbows in. "Booze?"

"Sure, if you want me to feel at home," says Juno. She ignores him. Makes her way to the bar. Attracts attention, too: a tall dark woman with a very big gun watches her quite frankly, leaning her elbows hard against the counter. Then she turns to look at Juno, but slowly, slowly, like tectonic plates shifting. Her eyes are absolutely black.

"That's gotta be our contact, boss," Rita hisses at him.

"Gee," says Juno, rocking from the force of that look, "I didn’t notice," but he sits, anyway.

Good thing Vespa stayed on-ship: Juno doubts she'd have looked kindly on someone mooching up to her wife. Buddy smiles that million-cred smile of hers and utterly ignores her admirer. She returns some minutes later with a tray of shots and takes the seat next to Juno’s, folding up her long limbs in her casual, unreserved way.

“You got a bait,” Juno says. Behind her the dark woman looks away long enough to drain her pint in one hefty gulp, and gathers up her gun.

“Oh, yes, I know.” Buddy sounds unperturbed. “No worries, Juno, it will come out alright.”

“Last time you told me that, lady, my intestines were hanging outta my stomach.”

“It taught you a valuable lesson.”

“Not getting stabbed to death by your wife. Got it.”

“Boss,” says Rita, in a perfectly audible undertone.

“Yes, darling?” says Buddy, at Juno says, “What?”

“ _Buddy_ ,” says the black-eyed woman.

Close up she’s even bigger. Her arms are strong as tree trunks, or look like it. She sits down. “Oh, that’s right,” says Buddy. “Juno—Miss Rita—this is Amanita Ann.” And then she adds: “My sister.”

“... you two look real different,” says Juno after a long, long moment.

“Of course we’re not related by blood, Juno. We look nothing alike.”

“That’s what I’m sayi—whatever.” He takes a shot. Liquor’s red and salty and burns all the way down. Not pleasant. Rita, of course, swallows hers without a whimper. Amanita Ann glares star-thunder at them all, and thunks her gun on the table right next to Juno’s fist.

“Oh, do be nice, Ann,” says Buddy, bored.

“Ten years, Bud.” Her voice is low and grave, resonant, like sandclouds gathering over the Martian deserts.

“Yes, well. I got busy. You know how it is, darling.”

“Too busy to make a home call.”

“Unfortunately so. Now, are we going to do business, or are you going to sulk?”

Amanita Ann’s face darkens further. “Fine.”

Nice to know everybody’s got a messed-up family, Juno thinks dourly. Rita is staring at Amanita Ann in the sort of way she used to stare at Yasmin Swift, which says a lot about Rita’s propensity to fall for people who’re hot, redoutable, and probably about to try and kill her. Which, hey, it’s not like Juno has any room to talk.

“We are looking,” says Buddy—voice like silk, and then some—”for an invitation to the Opera.”

That’s … new. And news. “Oooooh,” says Rita, who’s never been to the Opera in her entire life, “are we gonna dress up, are we gonna have _petites-fours_ , do they still do The Lost Agony of Lord A—”

“Didn’t know you had Opera Houses in the Outer Rim,” Juno interrupts. Blunt. He can do blunt like a master. Buddy smiles thin and white.

“We don’t,” Amanita Ann rumbles. She downs another shot, and then reaches for another. “Except for the one on Brahma.”

 

* * *

 

They emerge some time later—an hour? two? the smoke got to Juno’s head, made him hazy and dull, made time elastic—with a token of trust grudgingly bestowed on them by Amanita Ann: a black six-sided die that weighs more than it should, and a word of advice to visit the Venusian Ambassador on Neptune.

“That went—well?” Juno hazards, as they find their way back through the endless stalls.

“Oh, quite,” says Buddy. “Do hurry, Rita darling, my sister is going to try and kill us.”

Rita squawks.

“What,” says Juno.

Buddy’s long strides do not falter, but she does cast an amused glance at them over her shoulder. “She is really quite angry at me. I’m sure you’ve noticed: we had a very long conversation.”

“Well, yeah, but—what’ve you done to her, anyway?”

“Oh, you know how it is; abandoned her in a tight spot, when she asked me to stay.” Juno swallows this. “She always was the one to hold a grudge,” Buddy ponders. “This way—quickly, now.”

They slip, backs bent, between a stall whose owner is bartering delicate glass wares, a food stand roasting up huge crustacean star-fish, and a wiry creature standing on a stage, belting out what is probably meant to be poetry, but really, _really_ isn’t. The cobblestones, iron and rock melded together by centuries of wear, are rough and uneven, the farther into the Market they go, and the crowd looks even stranger—odd appendages, odder faces, smelly colorful clothes and terrifying masks. Buddy’s hand is tense on the butt of her rifle.

“What about that little token thing, Miss Buddy?” says Rita, timidly. Well, ish. As timid as Rita gets, anyhow. “It’s … blinking at me.”

“What? Oh, this. No, that’s worthless. Well, it’s worth enough—quite a few creds in obsidian tech, for one thing. Pretty little thing. Shame to destroy it.”

“Destroy it,” Juno repeats.

“That’s coz it’s a tracker, Mistah Steel,” says Rita, in confidence.

That drop-dead gorgeous smile again. “Well spotted, Miss Rita. Juno, will you be a dear and crush it under your heel?”

Juno snorts. He’s the muscle on this operation, technically, and Rita—well, he’s not sure why Rita’s here, except as moral support; but Buddy can take care of herself. “Sure you don’t want to say bye-bye to your sister, Aurinko?”

“Oh, no. We’ll see each other in another decade, I’m sure.”

Alright then. Juno gives it a good stomp. The die cracks open, and then, unsettlingly, dissolves into dust. Obsidian tech. Huh.

“Come along, Juno.”

Onward—through emporiums of light, smoky underground cafés, large bright plazas, bridges over dizzying heights, flanked by gigantic statues of creatures Juno half recognizes, and half not; raised voices and laughter, the sizzling flesh of some animal on a cathodic spit, the smell of hot spiced wine spilt; peddlers, pickpockets, mad poets and beggars. No one calls the Night Market home, and yet it never sleeps. God knows how big it is. Juno swears as someone rams into his shoulder, and shoves the person away with a grunt, ignoring the weak reprisal. Hand on his plasma gun, finger on the trigger. He wraps the other around Rita’s wrist without a word, and follows Buddy into another murky alleyway, inspecting the shadows for stragglers.

Not well enough. They’re three minutes out from their exit route when five goons in military uniform nearly take off his ear with blaster fire.

“Shit,” he gasps, shoving Rita away from him, and, spinning, opens fire. The shot goes wide off its mark but does take down one of the five—a brief burst of self-satisfaction—and then two are on him and two are on Buddy, and Juno grits his teeth and swings a fist wide.

Buddy’s reflexes are quick, relentless, and she fights like a mechanical tiger: without mercy or kindness. Juno wishes he could say the same. If he had the Theia—well. This would be a joke; a fight well-won, and fast. But he doesn’t, and he won’t, and that means he disables one of the two easily enough but doesn’t notice the other lurching up from his blind side. He does notice the hard stone floor when he's thrown bodily onto it, though.

_Shit._

Professionals. Mask. Badge. Court-appointed shotgun. He stares down the barrel of the sort of weapon that’s not designed to stun, and—

Smell of burning flesh. There’s a gurgle. Goon Number Four sinks to their knees, and then sinks further sideways and sort of … faints.

Nureyev prods the fallen body with the tip of his boot and slides the plasma blade back into his sleeve.

“Well,” he says. He looks at Juno.

Juno’s down. His head hurts. He gasps for air.

A heavy thunk, as Buddy disposes of the last thug with the butt of her rifle, and then slings it over her shoulder, catching her breath. She looks a question at Nureyev. “Starr. You get it?”

That fox’s smile again. God _damnit,_ Juno’s missed him.

But then Nureyev glances back down at him, and the smile fades. His voice is cool and not entirely unkind. “Are you going to stay down there much longer, detective?”

“You know, I don’t know, this is actually pretty comfy,” says Juno, cranky, “you should give it a try. _Starr_.”

“I’ll pass,” says Nureyev, and then, after a slight hesitation that has to be at least fifty percent fake, makes as though to reach down to help him up.

He doesn’t. He’s wearing black leather gloves, fingerless, and his hand pauses for a second in the air before he drops it again.

“Mistah Steel!” cries Rita, emerging from the hideout she was smart enough to dive to, “are you bleeding? Are you hurt? Oh god oh god he’s not moving is he breathing—”

“I’m fine, Rita,” says Juno, and hauls his own damn self up. Nureyev takes a discreet step back.

“Good work, Juno,” says Buddy, “you didn’t try to get yourself killed. For once.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying something new. Self-preservation February, it's a whole thing—”

“ _However_ ,” adds Buddy, “we are going to have to do something about that blind angle of yours before it becomes inconvenient.”

“No thanks. What were we, the decoy?”

“Of course,” she says, unperturbed. “Somebody had to get Ann’s attention while our friend was … withdrawing ... the real token from her quarters.”

“Oh, what,” says Juno, and Nureyev says, “Such a pretty thing, too.”

In his palm is an iron ring, plain black. Looks heavy. Juno eyes it with disfavor. “That?”

“That,” says Nureyev, lightly, “will procure us an invitation to an _extremely_ select reception in honor of the Princess Royale of Jupiter’s coming of age. Ten days from now. On IO.” He glances at Buddy. “Where, unless I am mistaken, a very dangerous man by the name of Ellery Peace takes his recreational sabbatical every six years.”

 

* * *

 

“Ellery Peace,” says Buddy.

“Philanthropist,” adds Siquliak. “Philosopher. Philologist.”

“Son of a bitch,” says Vespa, in that rough, raspy voice of hers.

“He is that, too.”

“Extent executive director of the Jupiter-IO Affiliated System,” Siquliak continues, unmoved. “The record of his acquisitions and investments over the past twenty-four Solar months indicate he is a great lover of classical Martian art, butter croissants, and paramours suitably inoculated with rell-oil 23.”

“The stimulant,” says Nureyev.

“The _black market narc_ ,” says Juno, appalled.

“ _Oooh_ ,” says Rita, but in as small a voice as she can manage.

Rell-oil 23 is—well, it’s not pretty, whatever it is: ideological brainwashing meets hardcore aphrodisiacs meets planet-hunger; cravings so hard you might chew your own stomach out. It’s a safe bet Peace’s enamoured swains aren’t in their best heads, if there’s anything of them left _in_ their heads at all.

“Paramours helpfully provided by the Pontificate of Mercy,” says Buddy. “By the half dozen. He is a repeat customer of their all expenses paid package.”

“Ever thought of starting small?” Juno says faintly. Alright, sure: he’s heard of the Pontificate. He’s watched refugees arrive half-dead in Hyperion City’s space-ports, craving a little human warmth, detesting eye contact. He’s interrogated enough of them during his days in the HCPD to recognize the signs: the cold sweats, the dazed look, the wandering fingers. He’s had enough of ‘em taken off his hands, too. Smiling watchdogs came and paid off their dues and took them away, and they weren’t ever seen again, except those that got really unlucky and ended up in a cold case file somewhere, their organs sold off to whoever put in the highest bid. Wasn’t even that high, usually.

“Darling, we _have_ started small. We have gathered information on Peace and his compatriots within the Pontificate for the better part of the last year. Rasbach—you remember—traded in slave-flesh; he, too, is on the board. We’ve exhausted the slightest, minutest chinks in his defenses; we have gained leverage and lost it, and then we’ve gained it again. We know what Peace likes. We know what he wants. We even know what he needs, and that, Juno, is knowledge not easily acquired. In transparency, what he needs is to not have committed tax evasion for a decade. _Do_ trust me.”

“I take it,” Nureyev says, swinging a lazy ankle, “that we are to remove something from this person.”

“Remove. Ruin. Aneantize,” says Siquliak.

“Hang on,” says Juno, so startled he forgets about everything he is pointedly not thinking about. “How the hell can _you_ not know? What, you joined the biggest job in the past centuries without knowing anything about it?”

Nureyev flicks him a thin, piercing glance. Every time he moves, every time he breathes, his silver earrings chime. “As did you.” And then he smiles. It’s a _killer_. “Until ten days ago, detective, I was unaware we were to have … partners … in this venture.”

He’ll bet. Had Buddy told him about picking Juno up on Mars, Nureyev would’ve been on the soonest shuttle out to the Outer Rim. As far as Juno knows—and Juno’s been careful to know—Nureyev has never returned to Hyperion City; nor the Cerberus Province, Olympus Mons, or, for that matter, Mars. None of his aliases has ever made it back on transit records in- or off-world. No rumors of stolen goods. No disappearing acts, no suspect alibis, no whispers. Nureyev disappeared as he swore he would, and he’s never looked back.

“I’m not a PI anymore,” Juno hears himself say. The words stick. The world dances. Mars is light-years away.

“My condolences, Juno,” says Nureyev, eyebrows high. “What are you, again, these days?”

And if that isn’t the ten million-cred question. “I got no goddamn clue,” Juno snaps, blinking, glancing away. Rita across from him is wide-eyed, worried, a spoonful of breakfast cereal frozen halfway to her mouth. “Be sure to let you know when I figure it out."

He feels the weight of Nureyev’s gaze upon him a moment longer. But even that pressure eases. Juno meets Siquliak’s eyes and finds nothing but calm, understated disinterest there.

“What the hell do you want with Peace, anyway? … you didn’t seem all that bothered to do business with a flesh-trader the day we met.”

“I wonder what about that day might have changed my mind,” says Buddy, sharp as a snake and deadlier, and Juno—immediately—feels terrible about himself. Vespa is standing at her shoulder, her hand heavy upon Buddy’s wrist. But she sighs. “And yet—you’re right. Vigilantism is hardly our realm of expertise."

"I have told you, Juno," says Jet, grave. "We are on the hunt for something big."

"By far bigger than Ellery Peace," adds Buddy. "No, he is … a sting operation. In Ellery Peace's personal safe is a great deal of information, most of which we require to carry out our intentions."

"Which are—what?"

"You'll know in good time."

"Like hell—"

"There is a reason we can't tell you, Juno," says Buddy. "Our success is dependent on a very, very few being aware of our plans; allies or enemies; it's all the same. We are in the crosshairs, you see: powerful foes know what we know, and know that we know it. The least you understand, until the moment comes, the least danger you—and, by proxy, ourselves—will be in."

"Until then," says Jet, "there is Ellery Peace."

"Who has the most modern security system in the Jupiter-IO Affiliated System," says Nureyev. Juno's attention, inevitably, is drawn back to him. He regrets it. Nureyev is wearing a disheveled white blouse, embroidered in such fine silver filigree it almost looks wet, clinging to his waist. Hair slicked back. Long legs crossed. He looks like a severe bird of prey. "A worthwhile pursuit, of course, but hardly one to be improvised in ten days."

"Would be, if we were doing that. We don't need to get past his security system," says Buddy. "Only into his head. Catch a fraction of the code in his brain. It should prove simple to apply it to an artificial protoplasm—and so open the safe … discreetly."

“Just like in the mooovies,” breathes Rita. “Ooh, Mistah Steel, remember, it’s just like in Darkling Doom and the Dread Duck, when Darkling decides to take their revenge on the Anseriform Mafiosi—”

“Haven’t seen it.”

“—and realizes their own sibling has impersonated them for twenty-eight years—sure you have, boss, we watched it together two months ago.”

“I fell asleep in the popcorn, Rita.”

“Darkling Doom wrestles the Dread Duck in mortal combat,” says Vespa quietly. There is a brief pause.

“ _Oh_ , Miss _Ves_ pa,” Rita breathes.

“Oh, dear,” says Buddy, and starts laughing.

 

* * *

 

Two days after leaving the Outer Rim, Nureyev comes out of his cabin wearing extremely tight pants, a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and a v-neck henley that shows entirely too much collarbone than is legal. Juno chokes on his drink.

"You shouldn't drink so fast, Mistah Steel."

"Shut up," he says, weakly enough to take the sting out of it.

Nureyev's eyes behind the glasses are pale and cool.

"Something wrong, Juno?"

Damnit, that voice. He hears it in his dreams. The best of his nightmares.

"No," he says, into his glass. "Nothing."

 

* * *

 

So: Nureyev is angry.

Juno … gets it. It takes a fool to double-cross someone that deadly, and Juno's a fool ten times over. He gets anger just fine. Hell, he's made best pals with anger when he was four years old, and even whatever Ramses O'Flaherty and the Theia Spectrum have done to screw with his head hasn't got him to let it go. He recognizes it now, pared down, slicked down, refined to an art—a Brahmese knife, sliding between the ribs. _I haven’t forgotten. I haven’t forgiven_.

Nureyev is a killer, a trickster, a liar, a fiend in bed, though almost impossibly tender, and Juno once trusted him better than he had trusted anyone in a long, long while. Nureyev gave him his name, gave him his past, promised him adventure and wonder, planets beyond his imagination, and Juno—wanted that so badly he could taste it on his tongue, in his mouth, in his _throat_ —

Anyway.

Now Nureyev is unfailingly polite. He speaks to Juno with calm and dignity. Somehow, that’s worse than the dirtiest fight; worse than a punch in the teeth, worse than losing his own fucking eye. It is a swift, exquisite cruelty. Subtle. Intentional. In plain sight.

Juno knows it lies dormant under every persona Nureyev creates, easy as he breathes: the sort of ruthlessness that comes with a kiss and hurts like a heart and leaves you regretting something you never had.

Juno saw the fox’s malice behind Nureyev’s smile the moment he stepped into his office. There hasn’t been a day since he hasn’t longed to see it again.

 

* * *

 

It’s not a big ship. Buddy and Vespa are shacking up together, and Juno’s not entirely sure where Jet sleeps, if at all; he and Rita are right next to each other, which means he can hear her streams through the partition at two a.m. when he can’t sleep, which is most nights, but also means he can call out to her anytime. He’s not gonna, but. It’s nice to know he could.

Observation deck, supply vault, engine rooms, med bay, pilot cockpit, common area. The ship was built for speed, not comfort, and every space is defined by its utility. Most of what they eat is either rehydrated or recomposed. There’s not much room to move in, and they’re all defensive of what little they have.

Rita, at least, has taken to crime with frightening ease. She and Vespa strike up the strangest goddamn friendship Juno’s known Rita to have—Rita who has the worst taste in friends, as evidenced by her sticking to him like glue. Rita steals up to the medbay in the afternoon, where, Juno’s heard, they binge on dramastreams and hot buttered popcorn. Rita hardly ever stops talking, and Vespa says maybe one word in ten minutes, but she looks at her with a bright, intent expression, like she’s trying and failing to figure her out. Juno mentions it to Buddy, who smiles that movie-star smile of hers and says, “Vespa wants familiar things.”

“So … a friend?” Juno hazards.

“If you’d been sold into indentured servitude and subjugated to a psychic thrall for five years, Juno, what would _you_ want?”

“Not being stuck in a tiny ship in space with no way out would be a plus.”

Buddy shrugs. “We make our own ways out.”

It’s an awkward, artless line of discussion, and Juno is grateful to drop it when Rita barges into it, bearing an empty popcorn bowl the size of a small canyon and chattering a mile a minute. Jet trails behind her, looking nonplussed yet amenable.

They’ve enough to do, as Buddy distributes roles and assigns tasks, that they hardly ever skirt the line of intimate conversation again. They spend the long spacetime evenings till they get to IO planning the job ahead of them, comparing strategies, debating the morals of using amnesia gas to secure their safe departure as opposed to just punching their way out: Juno’s favorite exit route, but not, as Jet puts it, _the most expedient option, Juno_. It’s a strange domesticity. It’s … nice.

They don’t talk about Hyperion City.

“Nothing to talk about,” he says, flippantly, the first and only time Buddy makes a passing mention of it. She makes a sound of sober understanding, and never brings it up again. When he looks up, cheeks burning, Nureyev is just glancing away.

Nureyev, who once gave him the choice between Hyperion City and the stars.

Juno feels, as he has felt before, as though part of him is still back there, in the doorway of their hotel room, and looking back: Nureyev’s skin pale against the bedsheets, his sleeping form restful, relaxed. His mouth that kissed Juno’s mouth. His hands.

Nureyev is always standing two feet away from him.

 

* * *

 

Wren Starr is—different.

Rex Glass and Duke Rose took up such boundless space—physical, audible, intimate space; they were capricious, effusive in their affections, chimerical in their amusements, larger than life and larger than Mars, bound for bigger and better things than Juno knew how to offer. He hasn’t forgotten a minute of it. Not one second. Glass’ knowing laughter; that intoxicating first kiss in Juno’s office; Rose’s hand resting at the small of his back as they conned their way into Engstorm’s Rangian Street poker party—it’s all there, still, somewhere, traces of Nureyev’s past selves in the man he is now, fragments, all of which fail to live up to the reality of him. Now. Here. Right here.

Starr drinks nothing but black coffee for breakfast, favors silver jewelry, sleeps with one eye open, and is glad to let Buddy take the lead in their criminal overtures. His tongue is sharp, his silence sharper. He wears tailored A-line suits, slim silver glasses, garçon-style culottes, and once, notably, a smoking-jacket embroidered in white roses, which Juno hates to look at. And always, always, heels—practical suede boots, red-soled pumps, piercing stilettos. Legs for _days_.

He flirts with Rita, who looks anguished and turns wide betrayed eyes on Juno and bites her lip fiercely. He touches Jet’s arm when they speak; he gives even Vespa the sort of smile that betrays a silent understanding. He sits next to Juno in the common area, hands him a bowl of reconstituted noodles, leans over his shoulder to consult floor maps. Juno, helpless against longing, finds himself watching his hands: the fingers he touches to his mouth when he thinks, the relaxed curve of his wrist underneath a long sleeve, the heavy black rings he wears on his thumb and index finger. Strong, long hands. Put bruises on his hips once. After a year of solitude and warm anonymous bodies, a whole fucking year of making himself not want what he was too much of a goddamn coward to let himself have, this abrupt godawful intimacy is almost too big to swallow.

Juno’s seen Peter Nureyev kill without sympathy and without remorse; he’s seen him so tender, so gentle, it would make a god cry with mercy. He sees that sweet sweet violence in Starr, magnified, purified, in the hard slant of his voice, in the hard line of his mouth, and he knows he had a hand in making it come to light.

Wren Starr is the man Nureyev built after he lost an … opportunity. While Juno was drinking himself into a stupor and letting a man he shouldn’t’ve trusted put a collar round his mind, Nureyev was putting together a past, a present, and a future; and none of them ever had him in it.

Nureyev does not touch him. Never. Nureyev looks at him sometimes, calmly, unflinchingly.

_See?_ that calm, unflinching look says. _See how well I’m doing without you?_  

 

* * *

 

Io is a world of sulfur and iron, inhospitable by almost every Solar standard, and mainly an alluring attraction for tourists, who get to observe the great volcanic celebrations from the safe shelter of a platinum-capped, top-of-the-line spacecraft.

IO, the Jupiter Imperial Operative Affiliated System, is a wide ring of moon-large satellites, interconnected, spinning, endlessly, on the influx of Jupiter’s magnetic field. It is a sequence, heavily regulated, of exclusive clubs, greater floating mansions, casinos, theatres, dance halls, Solar-summer residences, and orbital brownstones, where only the richest and most preeminent members of the greater galaxy congregate every six Lunar years for a sabbatical of liquor, sex, and gambling.

The rich. The worst of the rich—the swanky, the ritzy, the deluxe, who control, from on high, the destinies of a thousand thousand companies and communities across the Solar System. They abandoned Mars two centuries ago, leaving behind the prototypes of the huge, multi-estate generation dwellings they would go on to build; leaving behind the Prince of Mars and his kin—poor descendant replicas of an aristocracy long gone. These Families would buy out the Universe.

Juno hates it immediately.

The atmosphere itself is sickly sweet, so far from the murky, recycled air Hyperion City whooshes in its pipes that he chokes on the first mouthful. The eternal electronic evening on IO-15 casts everything in shades of gold and blue.

“Five minutes,” says Vespa’s voice, metallic, over the intercom.

Juno curses softly. Checks his holster—he won’t get to use his gun tonight, but hey he’s never suffered from an excess of caution—and tugs over it the dark jacket Jet deposited on his doorstep. It’s almost entirely black, and its décolletage is … suggestive, to say the least; the scions of IO want even their bodyguards to look obscene. Robotic silver vines climb up the collar, down the sleeves, across his chest, like thin, durable chains, pale against his dark skin. He catches sight of himself in the mirror. He looks more put together than he remembers being in a year, which says a lot about the past year.

He’s not so sure about the mask. Sure, it hides the ruined mess of his left eye, and, really, most of his upper face; in uniform, he’ll be little more than a nameless high-class goon among many, hired event-to-event to ensure the safety of the guests. Juno’s not entirely sure where they got that in. “Vespa knows someone who owes her a favor, and _they_ know someone who owes _them_ a favor.” Enigmatic. He screws the earcomms into his ear.

Banging on the door. “Move it, Steel! T-2 hours!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he mutters. Looks at the mirror again. Okay, fine: he looks _damn_ good.

The ship purrs contentedly around him. It’s a comforting sound, sort of: a great big cat with only one great big eye. He got used to it. He makes his way to the loading dock, where Buddy is allowing Vespa to zip up her dress.

It’s a pretty great dress. He's a little envious. Off the shoulder, ink-blue, with a silk train. Vespa, in torn pants and a beanie, lets her hands linger possessively over Buddy’s shoulderblades. Juno hesitates in the doorway, unwilling to interrupt, yet too far to overhear more than smiling whispers.

“You need not stand on ceremony, Juno,” says Jet, in his ear. “You may go in.”

“Geez—” Juno gasps. Heart throbbing. “Warn a gal next time, will you?”

“My footsteps are perfectly audible,” Jet observes, and hands him a hovercycle helmet. “I will deposit you at the staff entrance.”

“I take it I will have to make my own way to the gallery,” says Nureyev, ruefully, arriving on the scene with Rita on his arm, “and make an entrance of my own,” and Juno’s throat goes very dry.

Nureyev is the only one of them canny enough—and invisible enough—to play the part of the wealthy, indulgent guest. The heavy black ring on his hand marks him, for anyone interested enough to notice, for a man of good fortune and high status: the sort of toothless capitalist who makes millions off the sweat of Plutonian slaves with the lift of his middle finger. But he's now wearing a backless bodice that dips very, very low, and loose silk trousers; piercings in his ears, four-inch stilettos. Perfect make up, too: eyeliner crisp and clean, a cool touch of highlighter. He looks dressed to kill. Juno's actually pretty sure he _could_ kill someone with those heels.

Nureyev catches his eye. He gives him a very slow once-over that leaves Juno flushing, unhappy, and more than a little turned on. And then he grins that sharp sharp grin.

"Well. Will this do?"

"Should do," says Buddy, critically. "Steel?"

"Sure," says Juno, in a croak.

"You look extremely elegant, Wren," says Jet.

Nureyev hums, still looking, smiling faintly, at Juno. “You look quite well, Juno.”

“You look passably elegant, Juno,” says Jet.

“Buy a lady a drink first, Big Guy.”

 

* * *

 

On they go.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang infiltrates a very private party. There are makeouts.

“You better bring me back loads of swans, boss. Those tiny foil ones with lots of goodies inside—oh! or champagne-truffle amuse-bouches—no! Prussian caramel candies! Orrrrrrr—”

“I’m security detail, Rita. I’m not getting anywhere near the petits-fours.”

“Awwww, but booooooss—”

The earcomms are smooth and static-less, which means it’s close enough to having voices in his head to be eerily reminiscent of the THEIA; so Juno grits his teeth and remembers Rita is Rita and not _XKRFT_ —, and does what a cop does: he walks the beat.

The beat is large tonight. Peace’s little shindig is hosted in one of the greater levitating mansions on IO-15’s Southern Coast: a behemoth flaring with a thousand neon bulbs, a maze of twining rooms soaked in odiously sweet perfume, an inferno of nameless cocktails and heart-stopping music. Twosomes and moresomes dance in convoluted sets, foxtrots, and tangos. Alcohol flows in small hot pink shotglasses, slammed back with a sprinkle of limesalt; the sugar glasses shatter on the floor, are ground up underfoot by thin stilettos and plump loafers. Bodies entwine in dark alcoves, hands slither under fabrics and pearls; secrets are whispered and bartered and lost. The air stinks of illegal incense and proto-drugs.

Juno, in his guard’s uniform, makes his way through the dancing clusters and the crowded doorways, escaping grasping hands. He tours the mansion’s great ballroom twice, marking escape routes; then walks up to a bruiser-looking bouncer, gets his stolen armband scanned, and gets the go-ahead to walk into the ballroom.

This part of the building is different. Bigger, for one, and brighter: the couples there are higher-class, swankier, and a hell of a lot shadier. The great ballroom is marble and gold, well-lit in its middle, falling into well-constructed shadows all around. He spots Buddy immediately.

Poised by the crystalglass doors that open out into the floating gardens, her great red hair spilling down her back like fire, Buddy Aurinko looks imperial. Her painted lips are curved in a faintly disdainful smile. On her arm leans Nureyev: pouty, pretty, a bored socialite looking for their next hit.

Juno avoids them carefully, but keeps an eye on their back. They’re working inward, gliding elegantly from group to group: well-heeled heiresses and ruined entrepreneurs, failed financiers and mighty galaxy-makers. They place a few well-phrased compliments, laughing the soft, polite laughter of guests who are not yet accepted within the inner circle—but soon mean to be. The crowd shifts and moves, and then Juno sees Ellery Peace: a grey-skinned man with markings upon his face and golden loops in his ears. Easy to recognize him. He commands the room, though he is short, and thick-set. He moves and talks with the sort of authority one is either born to or kills to get.

Juno sees the moment when Peace sees Nureyev.

It’s a complicated move, and Juno’s not entirely sure how Nureyev pulls it off. But Nureyev glances over his shoulder at Peace, turns back to Buddy, and then appears to have an epiphany, and looks right back. It’s an impossibly sensuous look: the long line of his bare back, the twist of his narrow waist. His eyes are dark, calculating, and his lips open, briefly, in the sort of sigh that makes men swoon—the sort of sigh Juno knows isn’t the sort of sigh Peter Nureyev makes, nor even Wren Starr—the look, the sigh, the smile, it’s all new. Ira Crimson, heir to the Crimson Inc. fortunes, spoiled and flighty, a blue-blooded debutante who has seen better days.

Juno leans against a black marble pillar and watches Nureyev whisper a word in Buddy’s ear. Buddy pats his hand indulgently, and then the two of them detach themselves from the little cluster of stars and wind their way round to the center of the ballroom. Peace is waiting for them—trying not to look like it, but getting more impatient with every single rotation they perform.

Their meeting is inevitable, and Buddy manages to make it look innocent; she bumps into Peace backwards, fluidly, and loses herself in heartfelt apologies. She fusses over him: has he spilled his drink? Should she get him another? She seizes the empty champagne flute. She leaves him in the company of her charming escort. A last movie-star smile, and she is gone—and Nureyev hangs onto Peace’s arm with evident relish. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Juno keeps an eye on them for the next half-hour, tuning out Rita’s rambling updates in his ear. She and Vespa have arrived. She and Vespa have stolen past the security team on the top floor. She and Vespa have secured the mansion’s security station. She and Vespa are hacking into the security mainframe. Juno _hmm_ s and _mm-hmm_ s at the right moments. He breaks up a fight between a Venusian Countess and an Optics Ltd. shareholder, relieves a young-looking sentinel from duty, and dully contemplates his life.

Here he is: on IO, in one of the most select parties in the galaxy, watching the man he … has … sentiments … for flirt his way into someone else’s bed.

“Look alive, Steel,” says Buddy pleasantly.

He opens his eyes, wincing a little at the static. She is leaning against the buffet counter, twirling a thin glass of something bright red and sparkly between her fingers. “You don’t want to be shucked off for sleeping on the job.”

“Yeah, sure,” he mutters.

Over comms, Nureyev is laughing, a twinkling, tantalizing laugh, and Juno glances over between the twirling couples to where he’s ... gotten all up in Peace’s business.

His hand is on Peace’s hand. The distance between them dwindles by the second. Nureyev’s eyes are too bright, and for a brief moment of panic Juno remembers who the fuck Peace is, remembers the little brainwashing pills he confiscated back in the day, before reality reassesses itself, and he sees Nureyev’s delighted smile for what it is: a mathematical, calculated appeal to Peace’s preferences.

Still—there’s no reason why Nureyev has to be so close to him, is there?

They shift slightly away from the dancefloor, and Juno, irritated in spite of himself, moves closer. They are speaking about, of all things, Terran giraffes: there’s a black market for their fur now, and Peace is, apparently, a prime buyer. Good thing, too, as Ira Crimson personally has a stake in the giraffe hide market. “A match made in heaven,” says Peace, and Nureyev laughs and leans in even closer.

Juno doesn’t hear what is said next: it’s too quiet for the comms to catch. But he can guess. Nureyev gives Peace’s hand a tug, and with conniving smiles they slip together out of the ballroom, past a curtained hallway into what is undoubtedly Peace’s private quarters.

Juno takes a breath. Holds it.

“Well done,” Buddy murmurs. “Rita, dear?”

“One moment, boss!”

Some breathless typing.

“Is all well?” Siquliak inquires.

“Quite well, I hope,” says Buddy, and then Rita says: “Alriiiiight, here we go, thanks-Miss-Vespa, so! There’s _good_ news, and then, um, there’s _less_ good news.”

Of course there are.

“The good news is, we got in the mainframe easy-peasy, and the schedule’s all lit up and pretty right now, so _that_ won’t be a problem, Miss Buddy, I can see it all nice and clear! The bad news is, Mistah Starr can’t hear us anymore.”

A beat. Juno swallows.

“—cause of the interference Mistah Peace has set up ‘round his private— _bureau_ , ooh la la, fancy missy—this mainframe is a _mess_ , Miss Buddy, you got no idea—but anyway _we_ can’t talk to him and _he_ can’t talk to us, and—”

“That is a complication,” Jet puts in.

“Perhaps,” says Buddy, voice light, “but not one we were unprepared for. I suggest you drive around to Exit 16, Jet, darling, under the laundry depository.”

“Bud … “

“I daresay Starr will hear the static in his comms and adjust to plan B accordingly.”

“That’s a hell of a presumption,” Juno growls.

“Quite. But nonetheless one we must work with. Unless you have a better idea, Juno.”

He doesn’t. He knows he doesn’t. Nureyev can, in any eventuality, protect himself—lethally, if he has to.

“ _Bud_ ,” says Vespa, firmly. “There’s something else.”

“Oh?”

“The schedule. It looks different.”

“Very different?” Buddy’s voice has gone sharp.

“ _Too_ different. Steel was slated to go on rounds at twenty-six hours.”

“Correct.”

He’s memorized the schedule down to the second. The rounds are solitary, because moguls such as Ellery Peace cannot risk his security detail fraternizing; they are also thorough, and their timing is essential to the execution of the job. If the schedule has gone awry, their calculations are no longer relevant. And Peter Nureyev is alone in enemy territory with no means of communication.

“The appointment’s been moved to twenty-two hours,” says Vespa, “ten minutes from now,” and Buddy curses, fluently and under her breath, with such depth of feeling Juno’s almost impressed.

“Abort mission,” says Siquliak immediately.

“No.”

“Buddy. It is the only course of action that doesn’t end with one of us imprisoned or killed.”

“Not while Starr is adrift. Get him back on the map and we’ll jeopardize the job quick as you please. So long as he operates on the understanding that we are continuing as planned, we are continuing as planned.”

Buddy Aurinko’s a born leader. Juno suppresses the bubble of panicked laughter that rises in his throat. “I’ll go.”

“No,” says Buddy sharply.

“You got another bright idea, feel free to share,” says Juno, already moving: on to the western doors of the ballroom, where two collossi are standing guard, belted and armed to the teeth. “Starr’s stranded and defenseless.” Never mind, he thinks, that Nureyev is as lethal as a switchblade in a Martian fist. “We gotta make contact before he starts powering through the plan and gets himself _dead_.”

“Mistah Starr does show up on the inframaps,” says Rita timidly.

Buddy pauses. Sighs. “Very well.” Suddenly she’s all business. “Rita, darling, you guide Juno to—wherever they’ve got to—mind, you’re not to kill anyone without provocation, Steel.” And, before Juno can object that that was _his_ requirement: “And keep Starr from killing Peace, however great the temptation. You’ll be on your own: no comms. Work it out on the go. If you’ve time to take the specs, find the safe and purge it out. Then scram. Jet will be waiting.”

“Copy that,” Juno says, and offers a bright grin to the goliaths in charge. “Hi, fellas!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Mistah Starr and Mistah Peace are in the office four rooms to the left, boss,” Rita murmurs in his ear. “They haven’t moved for a real long time.”

That’s … good. He supposes. Honeypot missions are tricky business; toe the line a little too much, a little too far, and the whole seduction falls apart. God knows Nureyev is good at it. Nureyev seduced the socks out of Juno the day they met; and two years later a single gesture, a single look, a single sharp smile is enough to send fire coursing through his veins. Always will, probably.

“Left again—the _other_ left—they’re just ahead, Mist—”

Rita’s voice cuts out with a squeak. Juno pauses in an archway, then slips through, the soft swish of the panel door slipping shut behind him. His comms have died in a whisper of static. He’s got within the circle of interference, then; Peace’s bureau is ten paces away. Juno waits till his right-eye vision accustoms itself to the bluish darkness, counts to twenty, then walks on, his hand on his blaster.

Another, greater archway to the right opens into what undoubtedly looks like the bureau of a space mogul: bookshelves heavy, full to capacity, sumptuous leather chairs, tall windowpanes—and, in the center of it all, a desk made of what looks like real wood, dark and polished.

Peace has pushed Nureyev up against it. His back is turned to Juno. As Juno falls back, he hears the slick, wet sounds of their kisses.

Juno makes himself quiet. Peace is in his line of sight, which means—means, he only gets to see part of Nureyev; just enough to know that his eyes are closed, his hands on either side of Peace’s face—spine bent to the smooth desk surface, one leg hooked round Peace’s hips. It’s such a _move_. Juno blinks quickly, and swallows back against a bitterness in his throat. Nureyev is making soft, soft sounds, small gentle sighs of pleasure. His hips rock slowly against Peace’s, and he seems absorbed, taken by force. Wholly, wholly focused.

For a moment Juno falters.

It doesn’t last. Perhaps he makes a noise: maybe his back meets the archway marble too harshly. Nureyev’s eyelashes flutter. He turns his head just enough that he can glance at Juno.

The bitter thing in Juno’s throat becomes all angles. He knows he is standing in the dark, waiting, barely visible; but Nureyev does very little to react, anyway. He kisses Peace harder, tightens his fingers in the greying hair. Doesn’t look away from Juno.

A second passes. Then Nureyev sighs, lets his eyes fall closed. He and Peace part, and he affects timidity, lets shyness fall over his damnably beautiful face, lets his body relax in Peace’s grasp.

“It’s alright,” says Peace, as soothing as it gets. Nureyev looks appropriately anxious.

“We will be missed,” he whispers. Ira Crimson’s accent is thick and lovely.

“By whom?” laughs Peace. “Your cavalier? Have some faith in yourself, my dear.”

“Mmm,” Nureyev purrs. His lips are still impossibly red. “Oh, I _do_.” And then, conversationally: “Shoot him, Juno.”

Juno obeys without breathing. The blaster is out of its holster before he can think, his finger on the trigger; the stun blast echoes, muffled and soft, and Peace crumples lifeless at Nureyev’s feet.

“Hm,” Nureyev says again. With a sigh, he removes himself from the desk. Puts himself to rights. “A good shot, detective.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Juno says, and walks over and pulls Peace over onto his back. It was a good shot. Peace is breathing, barely. He’s out of commission for the next hour and a half. Nureyev tilts his head, and prods his shoulder with the tip of a red stiletto.

“Stunned?” A soft sigh. “Such restraint, Juno. He is, you know, a very bad man.”

“You want him killed, do it yourself,” Juno snaps, working with precision: he secures Peace’s arms behind him, trusses him up like the proverbial turkey; leaves him propped against his own precious desk.

“So I would have, had you not … intruded.” There’s something odd in Nureyev’s voice, too: something bitter, so low, so low that Juno barely catches it. When he looks up Nureyev’s eyes have gone quite cold. “Is there any reason why you decided to compromise my cover, detective? I may promise you that my virtue was not under _any_ form of duress.”

“We lost you on comms,” says Juno. Nureyev stares at him. His mouth thins.

“As we knew you might. Hardly a reason to jeopardize the job.”

“Yeah,” says Juno, “except we didn’t know the schedule’d be changed, alright?”

Nureyev blinks.

“Look, we got twenty minutes, maybe ten, tops. Schedule’s all fucked off. Either we get the specs right now or we get out of here. You got the codes alright?” “I was in the process of acquiring them, yes.”

Nureyev kneels with infuriating grace. “Until you—rather rudely, I may add—interrupted us.”

He proceeds to do something unconscionable to Peace’s eyeball. Peels back the lid and— _eugh_ —pries an infinitesimal percentage of the film over his retina, applying it, with meticulous softness, to an artificial, portable protoplasm, which he wraps up neatly in gauze.

“Genetic code,” he says, catching Juno’s eye. “Mr. Peace is refreshingly old-school in his safekeeping measures, when you come down to it.”

“Long as you don’t pluck his eye out,” Juno says faintly.

Nureyev says nothing for a long moment, then stands. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Coming?”

“Isn’t his safe around here?”

Nureyev chuckles, leading the way. “Oh, no. Old-school, perhaps, but emphatically _not_ an idiot. He keeps his private safe in his private quarters, as one does.”

That … makes sense. Goddamnit. Juno follows, grudgingly.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nureyev must have memorized the floormaps: he leads them past dimmed doorways and through secret alcoves, one step ahead of Juno always, his slender form slipping through the shadows, adroit as a cat. Or a fox. Juno keeps his attention firmly above his waistline. It’s a struggle.

Past an ante-chamber, and then—

“This way,” Nureyev murmurs, at last, and effaces himself to let Juno in. The door falls to silently behind them.

It’s. An office. It looks no different to Juno than any of those they’ve seen on their way in, except—except it _smells_ like rich people, like thick amber-rose incense, cloying in the throat. Nureyev is already pulling on those black gloves of his.

“One minute, now.”

“Sure,” Juno mutters, and sets up sentry at the door, peering through the embrasure. “Think it’ll be long?”

“Don’t be impatient, Juno.” Nureyev’s feeling along the bookshelves with a light touch, keeping the desk in his line of sight.

“We don’t have that much time,” Juno says, “Starr,” and is rewarded by a sudden bright smile, which Nureyev conceals immediately, ducking his head to inspect the lower shelves.

“Shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

They feel like an hour. Juno determinedly turns his back: the sight of Nureyev bending over and murmuring soothingly to the furniture is a little too much. He waits, beside the door, keeping his breath even and slow, waiting for the moment when everything inevitably goes to hell.

“Ah,” says Nureyev, softly.

“Ah?”

“Nearly there.” A _snick_. When Juno glances back, Nureyev is unfolding the protoplasm from the gauze, acting quick, before the specimen crumples in his hands, as such fragile materials are bound to do. There doesn’t appear to be anything different about the bookshelves.

Another few long minutes drip by. Excruciating. Juno pricks his ears: a soft tread is echoing, as though from far away, down the corridor.

“Hurry,” he breathes.

“I’m doing my level best, detective.”

“Someone’s coming,” Juno says, and his hand falls, instinctively, to his gun. It fits against his palm, body-warm and familiar. Nureyev hisses between his teeth, and works faster.

“One moment—”

“We don’t _have_ one moment—”

Another soft _snick_ , and Nureyev makes a _sound_ —half a moan—the sort of sound Juno has only heard once, under the dark covers of a hotel room bed; the sort of sound that goes straight down to his cock. Then in a moment he is standing; a book is slipped gently back into place, and Nureyev is at the door, pushing Juno through, his hand on Juno’s shoulder. The contact is so sudden, so staggeringly intimate, that Juno near enough stumbles. “Come along,” Nureyev whispers, and finds his hand in the dark.

They wind their way through the shadows. Hell, this place is _huge_. No matter how far they go, though, the distant tread is getting no farther away from them: to Juno’s ear, it sounds like it’s getting close. They gotta have some sort of heat signature—something to follow them by—which, if they do, they’re fucked: how would they explain this? There’s little they could say to justify sneaking off alone in the dark; apart from—

“Damnit,” Nureyev says, under his breath, and then: “This way, Juno—”

They duck underneath a canopy of branches, and find fresh air. But it’s only a balcony, and disappointment rises in Juno’s throat at the exact same time nausea does: they are on the very fringes of IO, and the fall underneath them opens up into the void, the emptiness of space. The ring of Jupiter-IO’s dome shimmers silver in the distance. Beneath that is an endless, star-riddled chasm.

“This your way out?” Juno says, voice rising. “Because I gotta tell you, I’d rather cut off my own head than—”

“Juno, I would _never_ do that to you,” says Nureyev.

A beat. Juno stares at him. Nureyev’s hand is firm in his, the fabric of his gloves warm and impossibly soft. But Nureyev isn’t looking at him; he is glancing away, behind him, sharp-eyed, his red mouth pursed.

“They’re almost here,” Nureyev says, and pulls Juno to him with a sharp tug. He meets Juno’s startled look, and cups his face in his hands. “Kiss me.”

“What!—”

But it’s body memory, it turns out: kissing Peter. Nureyev guides his mouth to his mouth, slips his fingers in Juno’s tangled hair, and Juno lets himself sink into it without thinking. Nureyev moans a very loud moan, and plasters himself to Juno’s chest, backing them both up against the banister.

Juno hesitates—and hears the approaching footsteps, and _understands_ , and goddamnit if that doesn’t hurt any less than it ought. He throws himself into it, though. He’ll be enthusiastic about it if it kills him. It’s a sad, pathetic little story—the security newbie falling into the grasp of a bored socialite, breaking duty to make out in a dark corner with the pretty thing batting his eyes at him—but Juno knows sad and pathetic intimately, and kissing Nureyev is so _easy_. It’s shockingly, damnably easy. It’s good. It’s still so good.

Nureyev opens his mouth under his, bows his back under his hands, meets the wet heat of his tongue with his own. He moans again, and again. It’s so well-done Juno could weep with the pleasure of it. Nureyev is a professional—down to the bone. He kisses like a man possessed.

“Darling,” Nureyev whispers, between kisses, so soft surely, surely no one could hear.

“What the fuck,” says the guard. Juno tenses. But Nureyev’s hand is on his hand, halting it on the way to his gun—and Nureyev _keeps kissing him_ , apparently so tangled up in the joy of it that he fails to notice the blaster trained on them both. When Juno, with unfeigned reluctance, begins to pull away, Nureyev follows his mouth with his own and makes a very soft, very displeased sound.

“What the _fuck_ ,” says the guard again—he sounds young, untrained, which: shit—trigger-happy, the younger cops always are—and the blaster shakes in his grip. “Unhand him!”

“Hmmmm?” Nureyev says, dreamily. He peers over Juno’s shoulder. His voice falls into a purr. “And _who_ are _you_?”

“I’m—”

“I shall rephrase,” says Ira Crimson, tossing their head. Their hands stroke down Juno’s shoulders to his pectorals. “If you’re not _joining_ us, _why_ are you still _here_?”

The guard falters, opens his mouth, then closes it. He stammers the words out. “Shouldn’t be here, Mr—”

“ _Crim_ son. _Ira_ Crimson. This is—oh, what _is_ your name, darling?”

“Uh.” Nureyev meets his eye with a steely smile and a tight grip round his waist. “Mateo Polina,” Juno improvises.

“Fraternization between security detail and the guests in the grounds is strictly forbidden,” the guard recites, by rote, wilting under Ira Crimson’s interested stare. “So. Um.”

“Ah, but we’re not _in the grounds_ now, are we?” Crimson throws an arm out. “Behold! The infinity of the void below us— _around_ us! Could we, _truly_ , be considered to be _in the building_? I think not.”

“... right,” says Juno. “Definitely not in the ballroom anymore.”

“It’s private property,” the guard says, staunchly and desperately.

Ira Crimson launches into a _very_ deep, very heartfelt groan. “ _Ugh_. Very _well_.” He detaches himself from Juno, stretches long enough that their bare shoulders and back are exquisitely displayed, and saunters past the guard into the corridor, trailing Juno by the hand. “And _where_ is the exit? Come now, chop chop. I have a vibronic limo waiting, darling. We can … resume our activities there.” 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I see,” says Sikuliaq. “A proper plan of action, indeed.”

“It was all I could think of,” Nureyev says, yawning. The Ruby 7 purrs very gently around them. There are five distinct inches of space between Nureyev and Juno, and Juno is very, very intent on keeping it that way.

He can still taste Nureyev’s lipstick. It tastes of cherry liqueur.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I SEE,” says Rita, beaming. “You remembered the twist in _The Lovesong of Valentina, the Lost Earl of Theseus_ , boss!”

Nureyev leans his cheek upon his hand, smiles at her, and doesn’t say a word.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I … see,” says Buddy. “A classic.”

Vespa, up in the pilot seat, fails in smothering a laugh.

“A subtler approach than you’re used to, is it not? Kissing your way out, rather than shooting your way out. I’m impressed, Juno.”

“Look, I’m really tired,” says Juno.

 

 

* * *

 

 

And then, of course, because the universe has it in for Juno Steel, he can’t sleep a wink. In the artificial nighttime dimness of the ship, he kicks off his blankets and stares at the ceiling for so long that even Rita’s streams next door gently slow into silence. And then the claustrophobia kicks in—it really is like being swallowed by some gigantic space-whale—and he can no longer stay in bed; he pads outside, wearing nothing but his pajama pants, and makes his way down to the living quarters.

There’s brandy in the booze cabinet. He pours some in a thick, cool glass, and wanders over to the great observatory deck.

The ship is gliding far above a gigantic moon.

It’s full, and silver-white, and pristine in the way that only uninhabited planets still get to be—maybe the core is radioactive, or the air more toxic than all the corporations in the galaxy have learned to neutralize yet—and it hangs in the starless sky like an immense world, untouched and remote. It’s a nice fantasy, at least. Deep down, Juno knows that automated bots are probably drilling into its depths, extracting metals and gases. But, from afar, it looks … cold. Beautiful, in its own way.

He’s not sure how long he stays there, not even drinking, just—looking. But eventually the ship goes into a long, smooth dive, and something else comes into view. A tall structure, an old, old structure, blinding silver, like an endless, endless waterfall, dropping into the unknown.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Juno yelps. Nureyev steadies his hand just in time to keep his grip firm on his glass.

“I—” He stares. “Er. Yeah. I guess.” He swallows, and forces himself to look away. Nuyerev is wearing loose black pants and a soft-looking sweater, and he gives Juno a wry look before leaning his elbows on the windowsill. “What are they, anyway?”

“The Iron Falls of Ganymede.” Nureyev’s voice is soft. Tired. He has taken off his make-up, and his hair is looser, falling in his eyes. It’s a little longer than it used to be. “The Sixteenth Wonder of the Galaxy. It was built by Terran pioneers in the 22nd century, when they tried to harvest liquid iron from its core—before, of course, the Coup of the Unseen destroyed the local political system, and Ganymede was left behind. The structure crystallized. Froze in space.”

“So it’s a space fossil.”

“Space waterfall, certainly.” Nureyev does not look at him. “There was a time, once, when I thought we would see it together, Juno.”

A pause.

“I must confess, I never imagined it would be like this.”

And … yeah. Juno’s throat closes up, and he looks down at his glass for lack of anything better to do; Nureyev sighs, shifts, and does not glance at him, either.

“Look,” Juno says, finally. “Hmm?”

“You don’t have to do this like … this.”

“Do what, detective?”

“This—politeness—thing. You’re mad. At me.”

Nureyev gives him a slow, appraising look. Juno becomes, all at once, intensely aware that he doesn’t have a shirt on. “That’s certainly an interesting assessment of my behavior.”

“Oh, cut the crap,” Juno snaps. “I get it. Alright? I fucked up, I left, it’s all on me—whatever. You get to be angry. Bully for you.”

“I’m glad I have your permission to be angry, Juno,” Nureyev says, icily. “You certainly didn’t take my feelings into account when you decided to leave me _in our bed_. Without a word. Without a note. Without so much as a goodbye.”

“Yeah, okay—I left, and I’m _sorry_ —look, I just … couldn’t. Leave. With you.”

“Oh, that clears it right up, then.” Nureyev is infuriatingly calm. 

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Juno says, suddenly feeling very, very tired. “A city like—that. It was mine, and sometimes it was all that was mine, and … cities, planets, places, whatever they are—when you’ve put your entire life into them—” What had Buddy said? _You can’t break apart without leaving some of yourself behind_.

Except, he thinks now, that’s true for Peter Nureyev, too. He’s left something behind in that hotel room. Something of himself; something deep and true; something he didn’t realize was gone until Peter Nureyev was in front of him again, making it quite, quite clear he wasn’t getting it back.

“And here you are now,” says Nureyev, looking away. He looks exhausted, Juno realizes. He, too, was wandering the ship, unable to sleep. “A great many light years away from Hyperion City.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs; swallows in one gulp what’s left of his brandy. “Back then I couldn’t leave. Now I—couldn’t stay.”

It is too great a task to explain Hyperion City to someone who has never met Ramses O’Flaherty, to make him grasp the horror of the THEIA, the cold dread of seeing Mick Mercury with a glassy happiness in his heart. Nureyev has never understood quite how much of Juno’s identity was tangled up in Hyperion City; how could he, when he dances from one planet to the next, never stays in one place, never puts down roots? Nureyev has the universe at his well-manicured fingertips. One city is only one city out of many.

It sounds foolish, stupid, to say: _she doesn’t need me anymore_.

Nureyev hums, a little distantly. He maintains his silence for a long, enduring moment. Then says: “You broke my heart, Juno.”

Juno isn’t sure what to say to that. He isn’t sure he can speak. “I—if it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure I broke mine, too.”

A soft laugh. “I see. You’ve only got yourself to blame.” With a sigh, Nureyev pushes off from the windowpane. “I ... believe I will turn in now.”

He does not look at Juno as he moves away. But Juno does—turns, and reaches for him, uncertain what he’ll say, knowing only that he must do something, before it all goes to hell.

His fingers brush Nureyev’s wrist, and Nureyev jerks it back to him like an electric shock.

“Nureyev—”

“I _would_ appreciate it if you didn’t say that name aloud, detective. You never know who might be listening.” Then he shrugs, a sloping, unhappy motion, and looks back, hands in his pockets. “At any rate, I shed that identity long ago.”

Juno feels the familiarity of that moment—the wrongness of it in his mouth—in his lungs—and knows, deep down, that he deserves every damning word.

“I left Peter Nureyev in a hotel room on Mars,” Nureyev says, softly. There's only sadness left in his face. “And I’ve very little intention of ever letting him out again. Goodnight, Juno.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 Juno watches him go.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry. Making up with your ex is a complicated business. It takes time ~~and makeouts~~. Come yell at me on [tumblr](https://www.sombregods.tumblr.com). <3
> 
> (For what it's worth, the next installment in this series is all about Roses.)

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](sombregods.tumblr.com) ♥


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